


one sided reflection

by adoremark



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Internal Monologue, Introspection, Post-Time Skip, but i mean now we know annie can hear him, implied feelings???, literally just armin talking to himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27676487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adoremark/pseuds/adoremark
Summary: More often than not, he finds himself talking to the girl in the crystal despite knowing she can't answer him.
Relationships: Armin Arlert/Annie Leonhart
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	one sided reflection

It hasn’t been the first time Armin has tried to sneak down to the underground prison. There were multiple failed attempts of swaying the military police to allow him to see her, even with the surmise of observation on behalf of the Survey Corps. He supposes it was suspicious that he insisted on being alone. But now, following the coup d’etat of the King and Historia’s crowning, the military police are in less of a position to refuse him. 

Armin gives the guards outside the doors a nod before descending the stairs, the hem of his long coat brushing the stone steps. His heart thrums as he approaches the crystal. Two torches are strapped on either side of it. 

Annie seems to glow within the crystal. 

It is completely silent underground, the sounds of the celebration above muted. Armin stops a foot away from the crystal, staring at Annie’s face. One would think she looks serene, relaxed, as if she were sleeping. Armin thinks she looks tired. Like she’ll never arise from this restless slumber. 

He crumples the fabric of his coat and looks at the ground. 

“Historia is queen now.” He pauses. “Krista, I mean. Her real name is Historia. She’s the last of the Reiss family, who are the actual royal family.” 

Armin glances at Annie, almost expecting some change in expression. “What am I doing?” he mutters to himself. He looks down again, sighing before continuing to speak. 

“Her father said Eren’s power was stolen from them. Where did you get your power from, Annie? Just… where did it come from? Where did you… why?” He cuts himself off, running a hand through his hair. He chuckles to himself. “This is probably what you were trying to avoid. All this interrogation.”

Armin thinks back to when they captured her, Eren ending the fight by ripping out the flesh of her nape. From the edge of the rooftop, Armin saw the tear tracks on Annie’s face before she crystallized herself, making herself untouchable to the world before anyone could reach her. 

“Eren has your hardening power now. There’s plans to reclaim Wall Maria and take back Shiganshina using his power. The wall that you guys, Bertholdt and Reiner… five years ago... you guys were kids too. So you must’ve had your reasons, right?”

Armin waits. The room is quiet. 

* * *

It was relatively easy to make his way down today. Mikasa and Eren were passed out in their cells, serving their disciplinary time. He had insisted on sleeping with them, seated in a chair outside of the cells and draped with a blanket to counter the underground draft. He told himself he wasn’t going to see her today, but everytime he closed his eyes, he could see _him_. The Colossal Titan, gazing down at him, and steam clouding around them. 

The guards let him by with no trouble, but not without casting a hesitant stare. Armin shivers as he walks down the stairs, his sleep clothes baring little warmth against the chill of the room. Annie is there, against the wall in the center of the room, just like before. He takes a seat on the floor in front of her, twiddling with his fingers for a moment, before sucking in a breath. 

“I should’ve died today,” he whispers. “I should be happy, grateful, but I just don’t know _why,_ why would they choose me over him? Why me over the Commander?”

He could still feel it, the scalding heat burning through his frayed skin until it was numb, until it scorched his insides, until he couldn’t breathe. And the Colossal Titan, looming over him, eyes welling up with tears. 

“I saw Bertholdt before I woke up. I’m not sure if it was him exactly, but the way he looked at me…”

He doesn’t finish his thought. Instead Armin sits there, for how long, he doesn’t know.

* * *

Today, he’s brought along an item with him. Armin finds himself on a familiar tread after the Scouts’ debriefing with the military. The guards know by now that he isn’t a threat, allowing him to pass by without resistance. Armin sits flat on the floor and pulls out a seashell from his coat pocket. He turns it over in his hands, studying the colorful ridges and indents. 

“I saw the ocean for the first time,” he says. “It really was beautiful—beyond what I had seen in books or conjured in my imagination.”

He had fulfilled the dream that he had given up on a year ago. The ocean stretched beyond what his eyes could contain. It was a scent and sound that was completely foreign. The shell he plucked from the shores served as a reminder that the ocean was no longer a figment of his imagination. Back then, he thought, or hoped, that seeing the ocean would be the end of things. The end of this struggle and suffering. But when he saw the faraway look in Eren’s eyes, as he extended an arm out to point across the ocean, Armin remembered what laid past it. He knows Eren hasn’t been the same since he saw his father’s memories, that he was plagued by the past just like Armin was. 

“You really were just kids, huh? When you crossed the ocean to Paradis to complete a mission that had been placed on you. That means you must have, what? Seven years left? Even less probably. I forget too sometimes, that my time is limited now.” He lets out a wincing laugh. “I guess we were cursed from the start.”

Sometimes he sees the memories in flashes, like a light across his eyes as he blinks. Sometimes they completely overtake him, almost as if he’s living in them. Armin sees her through these bits. The Warriors in a carriage as they paraded through the city. Their training, a rewarding promise of security in exchange for their lives. The three of them running across the vast land until they reached the walls. And throughout it all, Armin realizes that the Warrior Annie wasn’t that much different from the Scouts’ Annie. 

“I think I envied you at times. How you could bury your feelings under such a strong facade. But I knew too, that that’s what you were doing. You could see past me too right?”

Armin runs a finger along the shell. 

“You were probably the only person who could.”

* * *

Armin cut his hair.

He runs his hand through the strands, the ends of it not catching on his fingers like it used to. Now, it is cropped much shorter than the shaggy hairstyle he had throughout his childhood. He had gotten taller as well, not as much as his friends, who shot up like green stalks. Captain Levi was not amused with their sudden growth. Like this, three years had passed. Yet, despite all that time, Annie had not changed. 

She hadn’t aged since their brawl at Stohess when she encapsulated herself in the crystal. 

She still wears the old military police uniform, the clothes clad on her limbs. Her hair floats around her and her face—eyelids closed, stuck in the same calm, blank expression—is frozen and still, the face Armin has peered into over these years. In this underground room, Annie remained the only thing that stayed constant as the world around him swirled. 

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” Armin says, seated at his usual spot on the ground. “About why you would let me live when you saw me outside the walls. In fact, if you were to let anyone live, it shouldn’t have been me. You knew I would figure out it was you, didn’t you? That it was a huge risk to your plan. You had killed countless of our other comrades without hesitation, but when you lifted my cloak and saw my face, I wonder what went through your mind that made you let me go?”

Armin pauses and looks at Annie as if giving her time to reply. 

“But then again, even when I figured it out, I didn’t tell anyone. I kept it to myself for two months. And in those two months, if I said something earlier, all those people who died at Stohess… that wouldn’t have happened.”

Armin remembers how he was seeped with guilt and self loathing, going through the city after the battle, collecting all the bodies, and thinking to himself that this could’ve been prevented if he reported his speculations like he was supposed to. 

“You asked me in the tunnel, when I had started looking at you like that. I don’t know when, but I can tell you why. Because I had faith in you, just like you did in me. Faith that we weren’t supposed to have. For once, I wanted so desperately to be wrong.” He gives a small smile. “I’m sorry we had to be bad people to each other.”

* * *

Eren was currently being held in one of the prison cells while the rest of them weighed over what his subordination meant. Armin finds himself escaping again today, his cheeks still damp and his mind still seared with the image of Sasha’s pale face on the floor. He arrives at the cellar with heavy shoulders and a fatigued heart. Transforming always takes a toll on him. 

Armin stands before Annie, his hands balled up into fists. 

“I did what you guys did, nine years ago,” he says, voice hoarse. “I killed a lot of people today, Annie. Women, children, innocent civilians. I could say it was inevitable, unavoidable for our cause. But really, I’ve crossed a line that’s irredeemable.”

He could see _everything_ in his titan form. The land sprawled before him, the people of Liberio swarming the city, and their shrieks as he flattened them with each step. Armin knows the reason why he’s been able to accept his injustices is because his position as an enemy to the Marleyans has been set since the beginning. 

“I feel better that you ended up this way, for some sick reason. If we had ended things back in Stohess, or rather if you lived and escaped, one of these days we would’ve ended up facing each other, wouldn’t we?”

Armin steps closer to Annie. His breath fogs the surface of the crystal and he can see his reflection doubling with her face. 

“Let’s have a talk someday, Annie. I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

**Author's Note:**

> i still can't believe aruani is canon but anyways thanks for reading!! you can find me on my [twt](https://twitter.com/markbffs)


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